More on the new, shorter school year

As last week’s edition of the Weekly Briefing reported, one of the sketchiest things to emerge from the closing hours of the 2012 legislative session, was an amendment inserted into this year’s “technical corrections” bill at the behest of the tourism industry that further shortens the school year in North Carolina.

This morning, reporter Travis Fain of the Greensboro News-Record provides additional details on this troubling, last minute switcheroo:

“A one-word change nestled into a 7,000 word bill that passed in the waning hours of the recent legislative session lets local school boards slice 20 days off their annual school calendars.

This seems to be at odds with the Republican legislative majority’s push over the past year-and-a-half to add an extra five days to those calendars, and one educational group has suggested that it might violate the state constitution.”